UC Berkeley Web Feature

Court issues restraining order against planned AFSCME strike

From Public Affairs | 11 July 2008

BERKELEY – The Superior Court of San Francisco today (Friday, July 11) issued a restraining order against the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME) prohibiting the strike it has planned for July 14-18.

University of California officials said they expect members of AFSCME, which represents UC patient care and service employees, to obey the court order and report to work next week as scheduled. Staff who do not report to work and are not authorized to be absent may be subject to disciplinary action, they said.

AFSCME has announced a strike at UC facilities throughout the state. The union represents approximately 11,000 UC patient care technical and 8,000 service employees. The university has been in separate negotiations with the union for new contracts for both employee groups since last year.

"Hopefully, today's court ruling, and the recent complaint against the union by the Public Employment Relations Board, will motivate the union to refocus its attention on settling these negotiations," said Howard Pripas, UC executive director of labor relations, in a press release issued by the UC Office of the President. "Our proposals are fair and responsive to many of the union's expressed concerns, and our employees deserve to have these negotiations resolved."

This past Wednesday, the Public Employment Relations Board, the state agency responsible for overseeing collective bargaining for public sector employers, issued a complaint against AFSCME for bad-faith bargaining, for failing to give adequate notice of a planned strike, and for encouraging employees to participate in a strike against UC facilities even though their absence from work would clearly endanger the public's safety.